earlythirty's review of Oliver Fritz, The Iron Curtain Kid

Good Points
combining historical facts and background information with personal recollections really makes history come to life.

Bad Points
there are four pages of pictures (more pics are on the book's website) but for my liking there could have been more pictures in the book.

General CommentsI had never heard of the author, so I was a bit skeptical when buying the book online but as soon as I started reading it I could not stop. The author grew up in east Germany, on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. But when reading the book I began to wonder whether itwas me who grew up on the wrong side. We hear of the authors' smuggling grandparents, his cat and mouse play with the mighty secret service, his gate crashing of an eastern bloc army command party, the adventure of sneaking away from a film set while wearing a policeman's uniform, his "dress smartly" days in which he and his girlfriend put the wool over their fellow east germans' eyes by pretending to be westerners (with more or less success), their adventures on holidays in other communist countries and....and...and. The book starts with the Berlin Wall going up and ends with the Berlin Wall coming down. The author was one of the many people who broke through the Wall in November 1989 to celebrate the night away in the West just to return to the East on the following morning to go to work and start on time. The book tells of romance, tears and even death but most of all it will make the reader feel like a cheshire cat - permanently grinning.